They Knew

The LA Times has an incredible story detailing the rearming of Iraq while under U.S. sanctions.

In essence, a Syrian company with ties to Bashar Assad’s government was used as the middle man between Iraq and several companies.

And the files reviewed by The Times — about 800 pages of signed contracts, shipping manifests, export documents, bank deposits, minutes of meetings and more — offer a rare glimpse into the murky world of international arms smuggling and the ties between countries such as Syria and North Korea, which the administration calls “rogue states,” and the ousted Iraqi regime. The documents illustrate the clandestine networks and complex deceptions Iraq used to evade U.N. sanctions and scrutiny by U.S. intelligence. Those include extensive use of front companies, sham contracts, phony export licenses, kickbacks and money laundering schemes.

What’s most interesting appalling to me is the fact that these companies knew they were helping to rearm Iraq. They knew they were violating UN sanctions… and they didn’t care.

Iraqi officials also made 15 visits before the war to a Russian company called Aviakonversiya. The Moscow-based company specializes in producing GPS jammers, portable units that distort signals used by satellite-based navigation systems. During the war, U.S. aircraft struck several sites where the jammers’ radio frequency was detected.

But Oleg Antonov, general director of Aviakonversiya, said the jammers weren’t his because the Iraqi delegations looked but never bought.

“Frankly, I would have had no qualms selling this stuff to Iraq,” Antonov said. “We wouldn’t have sold this to them directly. We would have done it the way everybody was doing it. We would have sold it to some third country.”

Antonov added that he would be “happy and proud” if he “knew for sure that our equipment was used in Iraq and was a success there…. It would be the best advertisement for our production.”

And to think… there will still be people who believe the UN still matters.